GPM Roundup: Youth Unemployment, Huawei Ban in Canada, and Turkish Involvement in the Syrian Civil War

The Geopolitics of Youth Unemployment
Nearly three years removed from the onset of the Great Recession, we are now faced with a global economy that has uncoupled itself from the conventional laws of cyclical economics. This impressive feat was accomplished through a combination of quantitative easing and public stimulus, coordinated by various national governments around the world. They accomplished their immediate goal of stemming the tide of global economic contraction, yet no one can be certain as to the extent of their success because of the uncharted economic territory that we find ourselves in; where contradictory economic signs emerge on a daily basis.

Red Star over Canada’s Networks: Huawei or the Highway
This Monday, a US House Intelligence Committee report was published outlining the case for banning Huawei and ZTE, two major Chinese telecoms, from network infrastructure building in the United States. The report argued that potential ties between these companies and the Chinese government represented a national security risk. If Huawei or ZTE were allowed to lay critical infrastructure in the United States, they might plant secret backdoors or data mining processes in network hardware at the behest of the Chinese government, thus creating a security risk in the event of a future conflict between the two countries.

Decoding Turkish Involvement in the Syrian Civil War
This week’s cross-border mortar attack and subsequent artillery retaliation along the Syria-Turkey border seems to harken what many analysts have been predicting for a long time: violence from the Syrian Civil War spilling its borders. The original mortar attack from the Syrian side of the border occurred on Thursday October 5th, striking the Turkish town of Akcakala and killing five Turkish citizens, including a woman and three children. Turkish armed forces then retaliated with a volley of artillery fire into the area of Syria where the mortar attack was thought to have originated.